The Power of Tradition and Ritual
Rev. Mark Hayes
March 30,2003

Readings:  from Notes on an Unhurried Journey by Jack Taylor

         One of our most difficult tasks is to honor the past.  Some would ignore the times gone by, claiming that they are nothing but a series of mistakes, while others ignore the past by asserting they only look to the future.  Still others will idolize it, claming that the former days hold all that was valid, and we are squandering our heritage.

         Honoring the past, however, would best be done by neither disregarding nor deifying our yesterdays.  We would honor the past best by using it.  We offer our greatest respect, not by veneration, but by utilization.  Our heritage, if it is worthy, offers us teachings and courage.  Without these the present is meaningless, and the future is fearful.

         One honors the past by contributing to the future.  Our forebears brought us to this point in history by moving forward, not by standing still.  It would be a disservice to them to reverse our journey.  They had the courage to travel new roads in their time.  Surely that courage inspires us to travel the unknown in our day.  What praise would it be if we were to erect monuments to their work and fail to make such labor our own?

         The past is the past.  It can be an idea, a building or a person.  Let us honor that past by expanding the idea, helping new life flow in old structures of mind and stone, and memorializing our heroes the only way they would want to be remembered: In living our lives with the courage they inspired in us.

         We honor the past by remembering what was as we prepare what will be.

from From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Lives by Robert Fulghum

         A friend of mine is a juggler.  He’s good – really good.  He doesn’t juggle spectacular objects – no flaming torches or running chain saws.  Just balls.  He’s intent on doing the simplest thing as well as possible.  He can juggle eight balls and keeps trying for nine, which would tie the world’s record.  I can juggle two balls and sometimes three, so I know just enough to know how really spectacular his achievement is.

         Once I asked him this question: If I were in your class, what would I appreciate about your ability?  Or in other words, what would another highly accomplished juggler know about your skills that I miss because I’m just and awed amateur?

         He said that the average spectator was impressed that he could catch so many things and throw them up again.  The truth is that the hardest parts are holding the balls just right, throwing them one at a time in rhythm, and not altering your breathing or inner adrenaline level as the number of balls increases.  Also, an expert would notice he had developed and learned to trust a reliable pattern of movements – a pattern that includes missing a ball sometimes.  When you miss, you don’t get upset or quit – it’s then that the champion juggler does not blow his cool or change his inner state.

         The secret of juggling is inner harmony and knowing how to let go.

         There’s a philosophy of life in that statement.

         As I learn to juggle the parts of my life, I have come to understand that meaningful rituals have a lot to do with gaining that inner harmony and making letting go as much a part of life as holding on.

         Rituals anchor us to a center while freeing us to move on and confront the everlasting unpredictability of life.  The paradox of ritual patterns and sacred habits is that they simultaneously serve as solid footing and springboard, providing a stable dynamic in our lives.

Spirit of Life, by Carolyn McDade

Spirit of Life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea;
move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close; wings set me free;
Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.


Sermon:
         I had us sing Spirit of Life just now for a number of reasons.  One reason is that I like it.  I’m moved by the images and feelings evoked by references to hearts stirred by compassion, and to hands shaping justice.  I particularly like the image of roots and wings, signifying the complementary notions of tradition and freedom, which fits right into our topic this morning.

         Another related reason for singing it today is that I spent about ten years in a congregation that had a tradition of singing Spirit of Life at the close of every Sunday service.  And so the song embodies for me the very idea of tradition.  One final reason is that, through the course of this service, we will experience three different versions of Spirit of Life, a living illustration of the fact that even traditions need not be so constrained as to be rigid and unchanging.

         Traditions are cultural customs passed from generation to generation.  They represent the ways in which we are connected or tied to our past through our family or community.  Family traditions help us to know who we are and where we come from.  Religious traditions give us a framework for addressing the larger questions of life.  Questions like “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?”, and “How, then, shall I live?”  While our religious tradition may not provide complete and satisfactory answers, it at least provides a context in which to explore and find our own answers.  The spiritual struggles and insights of our forebears can inform and enhance our own search.

         But what about the relationship between tradition and freedom?  If we are bound by tradition, how do we exercise the freedom of creativity to find better ways?  And what happens when we forget the authentic roots of our traditions?

         Let me tell you a story that illustrates how tradition can become separated from awareness and understanding of its underlying source and meaning.  A new bride is making her first big dinner for her husband and tries her hand at her mother’s brisket recipe, cutting off both ends of the roast just the way her mother always did.  Her husband thinks the meat is delicious, but asks, “Why do you cut off the ends?  That’s the best part!”  She answers, “That’s the recipe. That’s the way my mother always made it.”

         A couple of weeks later, they have dinner at the bride’s mother’s house, and her mother serves the same meal – brisket, with the ends cut off.  So the husband asks his mother-in-law to explain why she cuts the ends off the roast.  Her reply: “That’s the way Grandma always did it.  I’ve just carried on the same way.”  Well, Grandma was there that day, and she piped in, “I only had a tiny roasting pan.  I had to cut the ends off to make it fit.”

         Two generations have slavishly followed the tradition without understanding it.  And that, I believe, is one reason that “tradition” has a bad reputation.  It represents, for some, a mindless adherence to particular forms or customs for no other reason than “We’ve always done it that way.”

         And so I believe the way to benefit by tradition is not to either slavishly follow it, or to reject it as outmoded and useless.  The key is to examine our traditions, to understand where they came from, and to discern whether they still serve a positive purpose.  The family tradition of cutting the ends off the brisket may no longer serve a purpose.  The family tradition of gathering for the holidays may be part of the glue that holds the family together.

         As we heard in our reading this morning, “Honoring the past . . . would best be done by neither disregarding nor deifying our yesterdays. . . We honor the past by remembering what was as we prepare what will be.”  We may follow in the paths of those who came before, but we must be prepared sometimes to push off the main track and blaze our own new trails, following the example of those earlier trailblazers.

         One way that our religious tradition, Unitarian Universalism, encourages the exercise of freedom is by recognizing explicitly that ours is a Living Tradition, a work in progress, subject to ongoing evaluation and revision.  Furthermore it acknowledges that we may draw not just from one narrow religious tradition, but from a wide array of sources.  The little wallet card that contains our Principles and Purposes also contains the following:

         The living tradition which we share draws from many sources:

        Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision.

         And so we explore the examples and the insights of those who have come before us, and then, through the fire of our own experience we refine the traditions that we have inherited.  We build on them so as to find and make meaning for our lives in our world.  Tradition becomes our guide, but not our master.

         What about ritual?  Ritual is a loaded word, a scary word for some.  It may bring to mind a night in a tribal society with dramatically painted faces enacting a story important to their culture.  It may bring to mind a priest in the Catholic Church swinging smoking incense as he intones prayers in an echoing church.  It may bring to mind earth-centered pagans calling the four directions or performing a solstice ceremony.  While all of these are important ritual events, ritual is much more common and ordinary than those images imply.

         When families pause for a moment before a meal with prayer, song, or silence, they are engaging in a ritual – a small everyday ritual that allows them to give thanks for the miracle of the food before them and for the opportunity to share it together.  When college basketball teams chant, shout, and stomp together before heading onto the court to play, they are engaging in a ritual that reminds them of their unity as a team, the fun of the game, and pumps them up for optimal performance.  The donning of a judge’s robe is a ritual.  The robe is a costume that serves as a symbol to all that the judge is no longer an individual, but rather a representative of the Constitution and the values it upholds.  These everyday events are all rituals that we perform in our secular society with barely a second thought.

         You could each probably generate an impressive list of your own personal rituals.  I do the crossword puzzle and Jumble religiously, every morning, before setting out on my day’s tasks.  And I end each day with a snack before crawling into bed for a well-deserved rest.  These two small rituals provide reliable, somehow comforting bookends for my day, giving it some dependable structure.  Give some thought sometime to what some of your rituals are.  You might be surprised.

         I must admit that, for much of my life, the word ritual represented the epitome of ancient, unchanging religious tradition.  It evoked for me the image of rote repetition of acts that had long since lost any meaning they might once have had - acts that were empty forms of no discernible value.  But like tradition, ritual can be combined with freedom, creativity, and discretion so as to carry rich meaning for us.

         Robert Fulghum talks about rituals as “those patterns that we . . .repeat again and again because they bring structure and meaning to our individual and collective lives.”  But he also reminds us that rituals are not set in concrete; if they don’t work, they may be discarded, or re-formed to conform to the patterns of our lives as we experience them.  Used appropriately, rituals can provide a feeling of connectedness with our past, our heritage, our religious tradition, our own religious community.  They can remind us of who we are, and what we are a part of.

         We may think sometimes that we have left ritual behind.  But most Unitarian Universalist congregations have their own distinctive sets of rituals.  What are some of our rituals as a congregation?  We have a water ceremony to mark the regathering of our community at the end of the summer.  We trim a tree at Christmas time with decorations that we create together in community.  We have child dedication ceremonies to mark life’s beginning, and memorial services to mark its end.  Each Sunday we light our chalice to begin our worship, and each Sunday we share our joys and sorrows as a ritual of community-building.

         The distinguishing feature of all of these is that they are designed and practiced in such a way that we experience their meaning as important and relevant to our lives as religious humans in the here and now.  The forms we employ may be the same from week to week, and even from generation to generation.  But within those forms is the freedom to recognize and celebrate the ever-changing content of our experience of life.  Each life whose beginning or end we celebrate, we celebrate for its beautiful and special uniqueness.  The words with which we light the chalice change from week to week, adding layer upon layer of symbolism to the flame that lights our way.  And our joys and sorrows encompass the entire range of our human experience, as we reflect on where in those lives we find significance.  There is a power inherent in good ritual, a power that brings forth and punctuates the meaning we seek in the dailiness of our lives.

         Ritual, at its best, is not so much like a well-structured sonata as it is like lively invigorating jazz.  It still contains the essence that expresses or evokes the core meaning, but it does so in a way that makes it live and sing.  May we always live and sing.